DHAKA: A Florida jury has awarded the widow of a chain smoker who died of lung cancer punitive damages of more than $23 bn in her lawsuit against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the nation's second-biggest cigarette maker.The judgment, returned on Friday night, was the largest in

DHAKA: Tougher EU sanctions against Russia will be needed if Moscow does not change its "approach" to the downing of the Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine, David Cameron has indicated.Amid claims Russia-backed rebels were involved, the prime minister said the EU should stand up for

DHAKA: A series of bombings, including three over a span of less than 10 minutes, have killed at least 27 people across the Iraqi capital, aljazeera reports.The attacks on Saturday were among the most significant in Baghdad since fighters led by the Islamic State group captured

DHAKA: The battle between Israel and Gazan militants is growing, as the Israel Defense Forces announced early Sunday that it will expand its ground offensive.On Saturday, Hamas Islamist fighters infiltrated nearby parts of Israel via underground tunnels and clashed with Israeli

DHAKA: It takes professionals to shoot down an airliner and not a group of ‘drunken gorillas’, Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk told a German newspaper on Saturday, claiming that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH-17. ‘Very professional staff is needed

DHAKA: Britain on Saturday said Russia was not exerting enough influence over pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine to get them to allow international access to the Malaysian plane crash site. Britain foreign secretary Philip Hammond said it seemed increasingly likely that

DHAKA: Iraqi president Jalal Talabani flew back to his Kurdish fiefdom of Sulaimaniyah on Saturday after more than 18 months in Germany for medical treatment. Sources in his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said, reports The Straits Times. The 80-year-old head of state arrived on a private

DHAKA: Police shot dead a teenage boy on Saturday in restive Indian Kashmir during a protest against Israel's military offensive against Gaza. India officials said, reports The Straits Times. The youngster’s death marked the first fatality in a string of demonstrations across the

DHAKA: Malaysia on Saturday said vital evidence at the Ukrainian site where flight MH17 went down had been tampered with, calling it a ‘betrayal’ of the lives lost in the disaster. ‘The integrity of the site has been compromised, and there are indications that vital evidence has

DHAKA: Dutch police on Saturday sent teams to visit relatives of those killed in the Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine to collect DNA and other data to help identify the dead. ‘We sent out 80 investigators this morning, working in pairs, to visit 40 addresses,’ national police

DHAKA: Thousands of demonstrators marched Saturday to demand arrests in the case of a six-year-old girl allegedly raped in a school in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. Two staff members at the private school are accused of the rape on July 2, the latest in a string of sexual

DHAKA: Islamist militants have killed 270 Syrian regime fighters, civilian security guards and employees since seizing a gas field in Homs province. A monitoring group said Saturday, reports gulfnews.com. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described Thursday’s takeover of the

DHAKA: No one does special effects quite like Mother Nature — and right now she is treating Britain to the daddy of all lightning storms. In one of the most breathtaking displays in living memory, the heavens are being torn open by dazzling bolts of lightning. Crazy patterns form in

DHAKA: Fresh Israeli air strikes killed 11 people in Gaza on Saturday, hiking the death toll above 300 as UN chief Ban Ki-moon headed to the region to bolster truce efforts. The new peace push came as Israel's campaign against the besieged Palestinian territory entered day 12 in the

DHAKA: Separatist leader Aleksander Borodai said on Saturday that the black boxes belonging to the downed Malaysian airliner in eastern Ukraine had not been found. ‘The black boxes have not been found and we are not touching the site,’ said Borodai, prime minister of the self-styled

DHAKA: Nine Palestinians were killed in Israeli bombing across the Gaza on Saturday afternoon, raising the toll in 12 days of violence to 333. Palestine medics said, reports The Straits Times. The new deaths included a fifth member of the Zuweidi family killed in northern Gaza’s Beit

DHAKA: A van carrying flammable liquid rammed into a bus in China early Saturday, sparking a fiery explosion that left 38 people dead, state media reported. Both drivers were among the fatalities in the accident in Hunan Province, according to Xinhua news agency. Five people were

DHAKA: Diplomats have agreed a four-month extension to the deadline for an agreement between Iran and world powers on Iran's nuclear programme. The US says it will unblock $2.8bn in frozen Iranian funds, in return for Iran continuing to convert its stocks of 20%-enriched uranium into

DHAKA: Israel has warned it could "significantly widen" a Gaza land offensive but was cautioned by its main ally, the United States, about the risks of further escalation as Palestinian civilian deaths mounted. Palestinian officials said 65 Palestinians, at least 15 of them under the age

DHAKA: At least 11 fighters have been killed in a US drone strike targeting a Pakistani Taliban compound in the country's restive northwestern tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, officials said. The attack came in North Waziristan, where for the past month the Pakistani